Tuesday, February 22, 2005

The Dad Gone Mad 500

I watched roughly 10 minutes of the Daytona 500 this weekend. Ten minutes is my threshold for auto racing unless there’s a five-car crash where someone’s head goes rolling down pit road or the announcer with the hard, barely intelligible Southern drawl squeals, “They’re running three abreast down the straight-away, y’all! Weeeeeeehooooo! I tell you hwut, dad-gummit, I ain’t never seen a race like this’n right here!”

Three abreast. Love that imagery.

One of my favorite things about watching race cars on TV is that they have little cameras mounted inside the cars to spy on the drivers and microphones that capture the fever-pitched chatter between the driver and his pit crew. I like to imagine what the camera would see if it was instead mounted on the dashboard of my car, spying on me as I swerve through rush hour traffic on my way to work.

7:25 a.m. -- Camera sees me kerplunk into the driver’s seat of my black Honda CR-V. I start the engine, rub the sleep from my eyes and read the sports page while the car heats up. Then, as I pull out of the Evans World Headquarters driveway, I go fishing for boogers.

7:35 a.m. – I stop at Starbucks. They’re out of cinnamon twists. I have a k’nipshin.

7:45 a.m. – I spill coffee in my crotch. I scream “Fuck!” at the top of my tired lungs. The announcer says something about me needing to maintain composure. I make a mental note to stab him in the eye with my straw next time I see him.

7:50 a.m. – I’m on the freeway and the traffic is bumper to bumper. I turn on the radio and pick my nose again.

7:52 a.m. – I have extracted a booger the size of a ferret from deep inside my right nostril. I roll down the window and try to flick it off of my finger but it won’t let go of me. It merely adheres itself to one finger after another. I pull my hand back inside and wipe the booger under my seat. The announcer says I’m a disgusting animal. He has no idea.

7:54 a.m. – Some assclown in a pick-up truck cuts me off. I flip him off. He flips me off. I mouth the words “Suck my dick, you fucking asshole” at him. His mouth moves but I have no idea what he’s saying. I imagine that he is accepting my invitation.

7:57 a.m. – The assclown in the pick-up is next to me now. He rolls down his window and invites me to pull over and settle our dispute “like men.” I thank him for the invitation but tell him I’m late for my job as an assassin and will have to kick his long-haired pansy ass another time. I pick my nose.

8:01 a.m. – That new Green Day song comes on. I cranked the volume on the radio, roll down the window, sing as loud as I can. I pretend that my index fingers are drumsticks and my steering wheel is a cherry-ass drum kit, a la Neil Peart from Rush.

8:03 a.m. – A middle-aged woman wearing too much make-up pulls up in a Cadillac next to me at the bottom of the offramp. She throws me a look of disdain, the kind she gives to her cleaning people when there is too much Pledge build-up on her solid oak dining room table. I look at her for a moment and then scream, “Don’t wanna be an American Idiot! The subliminal mindfuck America!” (major emphasis on “fuck”). She shakes her head in disbelief. I am happy that she thinks I’m representative of what’s wrong with society today, so I pick my nose in celebration. Though there is nothing left to extract, I withdraw my finger and pretend to flip a booger at the Cadillac.

8:07 a.m. – I park the Honda in the Employee of the Month parking space near the front of my building. As I open the door, the assclown in the pick-up parks in the stall next to me. I clinch my fists and prepare to tenderize his ass like a skirt steak. He opens his palms in a gesture of peace, tells me he’s starting a new job today. As it turns out, he reports to me. I get him in a headlock and give him noogies just to let him know who’s boss. “Me! That’s who! Me! You got that, asshole?”

8:10 a.m. – My ass hits the chair at my desk and I’m still pissed about the cinnamon twists.

Monday, February 21, 2005

The Monday Enema

Dear Dad Gone Mad,

Here's the scenario: Get to work. Everything's going great. Go over to new, and very excited about, girlfriend's cubicle. Start talking about our fun drinking escapades last night. Fart. Isn't loud. Smells like a rotten trash barge on the last day of August. Run away as fast as possible. The end.

HOW do I approach her after such a disastrous event? She was most definitely aware of the smell and there was no one else around to blame it on.

Any advice would be great. I've only been friends with her for a short time and would hate to have a fart come between us!

Sincerely, Stinky

Dear Stinky,

In the friendly confines of my marriage to Hot Wife, I like to think of a good fart as a gift to her, like a bouquet of roses or a case of Yoohoo. When one of us cuts loose a butt-cheek-flapping window-rattler or a pooter that smells especially heinous, it’s cause for a good, hearty laugh. It might behoove you to take a similar posture with your ladyfriend. Make it fun. Make it an ice-breaker, an entrée through which you can take your relationship to a higher, more pungent level. After all, is a union where bodily functions like burping and farting are suppressed the kind of relationship you want to be tangled up in?

I think it would be silly to retroactively apologize or beg forgiveness for a butt bomb you unleashed several days ago. “Hi, um remember that fucking nasty rat I cracked in your cubicle about five or six days ago? Yeah, well, I had a pretty gross quesadilla for lunch that day and, um, what I guess I’m trying to say is, um, I’m sorry. I hope this doesn’t make you think twice about going down on me tonight.” No. Absolutely not.

Look at this as a positive. You’ve already crossed an imaginary threshold – the fart barrier -- that most people in relationships sweat over. My suggestion is to do it again. Next time you feel a hardcore goober putting pressure on your sphincter, turn it loose. If she laughs, you’ve got yourself a winner. If she freaks out (which is highly unlikely given that she has already been subjected to one of your weapons of ass destruction), she’s probably as prissy little control freak who you should kick to the curb.

Dear Dad Gone Mad,

My boyfriend is a web designer...for porn sites. Yeah. We've only been going out for seven months, after three months we moved in with each other. He told me he did web design, but left out the porn of it. So we moved in with each other and crap and then he told me, so I was like "uh...OK" and then he went on a trip and I was looking through his closet for an AIR CD (I swear!) and I found a massive collection of porn DVDs. Not just a little bit of porn...A MASSIVE COLLECTION OF PORN.

The man is 23 for Christ’s sake! And he works on porn!! And has…MORE PORN! Um yeah, so my question is...is he worthy of keeping around? Or is he some sort of weird retard porn freak man thing? Oh yeah yeah yeah and he talks to some of the girls that he advertises sites for (filthy whores). On the phone.

Since I found the stash and all I asked him about it, and he said he's stopped talking to the girls and buying porn. Is he to be trusted? Or will he always just be a wanker?

Thanks.

sincerely yours,girl who got a vibrator for valentines day from this man

Dear Girl Who Got a Vibrator for Valentine’s Day From This Man,

There are two issues here. One is the porn. The other is the personal interaction with the alleged porn starlets.

1. PornUnless the work your boyfriend does or the videos he possesses depict salacious acts with livestock or circus clowns or anyone from the cast of Barney’s Alphabet Zoo, he’s not hurting anyone. Shit, the guy is 23 years old. When I was 23, I was punching the munchkin five times a day and the issue of Playboy with a Vanna White pictorial was my bible. At 23, the kid’s hormones are buzzing around like an infant after a triple espresso. In fact, if he has a bearskin rug in his apartment, I suggest you wear shoes when walking on it.

As for his work, I’m told that porn on the web is an exceptionally lucrative pursuit. If you want the guy to buy you nice things and live in a neighborhood where you don’t have to keep mace in your purse when you go to visit him, let him follow his chosen career path. I don’t think it makes him “some sort of weird retard porn freak.”

My neighbor has season tickets for the Angels next to a guy who produces porn. When I ask the guy about the shit he sees at work (strictly for research purposes, of course), his descriptions make it seem as though he has become desensitized to the vision of women sticking 15-inch purple rubber penises into themselves. Your boyfriend may become similarly numb. Although I can’t understand how.

But if you’re really uncomfortable with his collection of porn, box it up and send it to my attention.

2. Talking With Filthy Whores On The PhoneThis, obviously, is over the line. If he wants to chat with dirty sluts on the phone, he should have to pay $4.99 per minute like the rest of us.

If he says he’s stopped calling them, good. Now get over to Radio Shack, buy some bugging equipment and spy on his perverted ass to make sure he’s not cavorting with Roxanne Gravel, the chick who can shove a two-liter Pepsi bottle where the sun don’t shine, while you’re not looking.

Speaking of whores, I have a question for YOU: what were you doing move in with this cat after three months?

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Submit your questions for next week’s Monday Enema to themondayenema@dadgonemad.com

Friday, February 18, 2005

New Feature: The Monday Enema

I’m both proud and horrified to disclose that this site gets between 600 and 1,000 hits a day. While only about 2% of you have the balls to leave comments, I have to assume that 100% of you are deeply troubled human beings. Why else would you return day after day to read about poop and boogers and the ways in which I have conspired to kill my daughter’s favorite TV character?

In part because I want to know the depths of your psychoses, I am prepared to offer my bad advice, twisted insight, faux empathy, handy tips, and hollow independent confirmation of your lunacy through a new regular feature called THE MONDAY ENEMA.

It’s important to begin each week anew, free of the burdensome problems and confusion that gather in our minds during each weekend’s Zima-fueled introspection and self-loathing. To assist you in regaining that freedom, I will be responding each week to your questions, queries and pleas for mercy.

The act of venting your problems and having them validated by a fellow looney-ass motherfucker will serve as a mental enema for you, helping to cleanse the little colon in your brain and starting you off right for a week of peace and harmony.

(Plus, we all want to see how fucked up you are.)

If you’re contemplating taking a new relationship to “the next level” by audibly farting in front of your boyfriend, we’ll talk you through it.

If you don’t know what to do when your boss says he’ll only promote you if you give him a humdiggity under his desk, ask us.

If you are seeking just the right way to tell your parents that you’re into sex acts that involve temporarily halting your breathing, we can help.

Send your questions and conundrums to themondayenema@dadgonemad.com.

In honor of George and Abe, the first Monday Enema will start draining this Monday.

(For those of you playing at home, that e-mail address should give you some insight into some changes afoot. More news on that next week, too.)

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Back Off Before I Tazer Your Ass, Sasquatch

The Starbucks nearest Evans World Headquarters has a drive-thru window, which is ideal for mornings like today, when my son was up at the buttcrack of dawn, climbing into our bed and wanting to cuddle and chat and bond. Because I am the model parent, I acquiesced despite the fact that my son had roused me from a dream where I was flying naked over Nazi Germany, taunting all of Hitler’s pointy-helmeted goons and telling them to suck my schmeckel. “Screw Adolph,” I yelled. Heil this, motherfuckers!”

Awake and grounded, I buckled my son into his car seat and steered our pimped-out Mazda minivan (the one with the CD player that doesn’t work because my daughter shoved about four bucks in loose change into it) over to the Starbucks drive-thru. A friendly female voice welcomed me through the speaker and took our usual order: an iced venti soy latte, a chocolate milk and two cinnamon twists. And then we “pulled around.”

Here’s where the story gets a little hairy.

I hold out a $10 bill to pay for our very healthy breakfast and out of the window comes the right front paw of a yeti.

I scream. “Aaaaah!”

My son shrieks. “Eeeeeh!”

The yeti groans. “Grrronnng!”

My first instinct is to fish around in the glove compartment for my wife’s pepper spray. I’ll douse the beast, render it powerless, hog-tie it and drag it down to the police station in exchange for a handsome reward of canned welfare turkey and supermarket scrip.

But as I leaf through the maps and pens and tampons in the glove compartment, the yeti speaks to me. In English.

“Sir,” it says, “here’s your coffee.”

I snap my head in Sasquatch’s direction. IT’S A WOMAN! A HUMAN WOMAN! RUN, WOMAN, RUN! RUN BEFORE THE YETI EATS YOUR GUTS!

I look at her outstretched hand -- the hand holding the coffee that I need to survive -- and I notice that the yeti’s arm is attached to the woman’s body. I inspect further and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a yeti paw at all. It was a woman’s arm --- an arm covered with more human hair than the heads of Crystal Gayle, Cher, Rapunzel and that weirdo lead singer from Creed combined.

I’m mortified. How do you apologize to someone for thinking they were Big Foot and being so petrified by their mutant limbs that you were three seconds away from pepper spraying them like you would a belligerent, piss-soaked drunkard who takes a swing at a cop? I try to summon the right words but my thought process is interrupted by the kid in the choo-choo train pajamas in the back seat.

“Daddy,” he says, “why does that woman have arms like a bear?”

“Not a bear, buddy. A yeti.”

“What’s a yeti?”

“A yeti is a big, hairy, human-like animal that lives in the Himalayas and eats little children who don’t flush after they go potty.”

“Oh. We don’t like yetis do we, daddy?”

“No, buddy. We don’t. And that’s why you have to remember to flush.”

When we return home from Starbucks, Hot Wife is awake. She confronts me in the bathroom. Seeing yet another cup of coffee, she wonders if perhaps I’m spending a little too much money at Starbucks. I tell her that with a few more visits during the yeti’s shift, our son just might be scared into painting the house, cooking us dinner every night and rotating the tires on the minivan.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

The Tribe Has Spoken, Bitches

I get a kick out of people who stick their noses in the air and say, “Oh, we don’t have a television.”

I’m all, “Why?”

And they’re all, “We’d rather talk or read.”

And I’m all, “Talk? Read? Are you fucking nuts? Where’s the fun in that?”

I lump people like this into the same category as the people who will haul ass to an Omaha donut shop to see an apple fritter that looks like the Virgin Mary or the people who perpetually send me emails about not flashing your brights at cars who don’t have their lights on at night because it’s all part of a gang initiation ritual and they’ll totally pop a cap in your punk ass. Word.

This just in, folks: TV makes the world go ‘round. It’s right up there with water and oxygen and Yoohoo. And when you say you’d rather talk than watch TV, I have to guffaw because what else is there to talk about besides the way women on The Swan look like Secretariat after their teeth get capped and how the incessant tension between Simon and Paula on American Idol is because they’re schtupping and Paula won’t let him poke her in the pooper? If you’re not hip to the happenings on the boob tube, I have to assume that you just sit and stare at each other and listen to the chirp-chirp-chirp of the crickets.

My sister-in-law, Karona, is the decaffeinated version of one of these people. She freely admits to owning a television, but she claims to be too busy to indulge in the nonsensical drivel on the air. Hah! Double hah! I wonder what she’ll say after I tell the whole god-damned Internet that whenever she comes over to visit the kids, she can’t take her eyes off of Survivor or The Apprentice or The Surreal Life long enough to notice that the kids are asleep, Weak-Bladdered Dog (whom she HATES!) has eaten her curry couscous (which makes sense because the healthy, preservative-free “food” she eats tastes like Alpo to begin with) and she has a big puddle of drool at her feet because she was so enthralled with the show that she forgot to swallow.

We also know some people who are hardcore bible-thumpers. These fine folks imply that they don’t own a TV because it’s the devil’s entertainment. I have never had the gonads to challenge them on it, but I presume this also means that they don’t listen to Slayer (the devil’s music), drink Mocha Mix (the devil’s non-dairy creamer), vote Democratic (the devil’s party), root for the Yankees (the devil’s ballclub), eat Hot Tamales candy (the devil’s confection) or engage in sexual relations intended for purposes other than procreation.

Actually, that’s a pretty good analogy because you’re about as inclined to believe that people don’t watch TV as you are to believe that they only screw when it’s time to have another baby. These are the same people who read Playboy for the articles and never pick their noses and smoked pot once but didn’t inhale. In other words, BULLSHIT!

I think there’s nothing wrong with watching shitloads of TV. It’s the American way. Hot Wife is always pleading with me that we should have some “quiet time” with the kids --- that we should have the TV off between the time they get out of the bathtub and when they go to bed. I ask if by “quiet time” she means we should have the Laker game on mute. She says nothing, just gives me a look like, “You just bought yourself another date with Rosie Palms, mister.” This from the woman who is still so stuck in the tar pits of the dark ages that she won’t agree to let us have a TV in our bedroom. I know: horrifying.

Quiet time, my ass. That’s right. You heard me. Quiet time, my pimply white ass. I want the TV on. I want my kids to know that if they can’t sing the theme song to The Apprentice (“moneymoneymoneymoney…MAH-NAY…”) by the time they go to kindergarten, they’re losers in my eyes. Yes, my son can say the alphabet and count to 10 in three different languages (and no, one of them isn’t Pig Latin) and sing the National Anthems of two different countries, but if he doesn’t know that SportsCenter comes on at 8 and 11 p.m., what good is he?

I swear, if either of my kids grows up to be one of those assclowns who doesn’t believe in watching television, they can kiss their inheritance goodbye.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

I Have Seen The Depths Of Hell And They Look Like The Inside Of A Bean And Cheese Burrito

I have a daughter.

Her name is Barney’s Biggest Fan.

She’ll be two next month.

She is sweet and cute and when she wants to know what I’m doing she walks up to me, puts her teeny little hand on my leg and says, “Danny. Dooween?”

Until last weekend, she was allergic to peanuts, dairy products and eggs. The doctor called this weekend and said her blood test revealed that her allergies have essentially vanished.

Last night, for the first time, she drank a sippy cup full of milk.

This morning she came to visit me in the bathroom and her ass smelled like a vat of spoiled cottage cheese on a 100-degree afternoon in Death Valley. She needed a diaper change and quick, before the paint on the walls started to bubble and peel.

[I want to digress here for a moment to tell you about the most disgusting thing I had ever seen before this morning. When I was in college, I took an environmental science course that mandated a visit to the nearby waste water treatment facility. In the middle of the tour, we were led up a concrete staircase to a viewing platform overlooking a 300-yard-long, 20-feet-deep lake of shit, piss, used condoms, discarded tampons, dead goldfish, soiled toilet paper, foam, vomit, Q-Tips and countless other unmentionables. According to our docent, when residents of this particular city flush something down the toilet, it comes here, to the Great Shit Lake. The aptly named “waste water” is then treated and recycled and the detritus is presumably packaged and shipped to McDonalds, where it is ground up with underperforming drive-thru associates and shaped into little McSausage patties and chicken nuggets.]

I carried Barney’s Biggest Fan from the bathroom to her bedroom with my hands outstretched as far from my body as possible. When I unzipped her lavender footie pajamas, a wave of hot toddler stench nearly knocked me backwards. As I steadied myself, I imagined that first few gulps of milk as it churned through my little baby girl’s guts, festering and souring, producing a foul chemical reaction in her belly and the rank fumes I was breathing.

But I am an experienced parent. I have changed literally hundreds of dirty diapers. And I know that any crap that smells this bad has the power to incapacitate those within a two-mile radius when the velcro straps on the diaper are undone. I girded myself, tried to breathe through my mouth and prepared to witness a new level of excretory hell.

When I peeled back her Minnie Mouse Huggies, Barney’s Biggest Fan laughed. I don’t know if she was laughing because she was proud of herself or if she was reacting to the “Grungnf” sound I made when I saw what she’d spawned. The entire inner surface of the diaper was smeared with a pungent, inch-thick wad of runny, brown nastiness that reminded me of the filling in those rank 7-11 bean and cheese burritos. Steam rose from the diaper, and embedded within the smear were three whole cranberries, the only survivors of the accident.

Evidently, dairy products are to my daughter’s digestive system what Mork From Ork was to the cast of Happy Days --- an unwelcome irritant that spreads havoc and destruction through the whole area. And we haven’t even introduced eggs or peanuts yet. I imagine that when we do, Barney’s Biggest Fan will sprout horns on her head and shoot fire from her cute little ass and demand a personal audience with Barney for her second birthday party. And then I’ll be forced to tell her the sad truth, which is that Barney lives deep in the Great Shit Lake and eats little girls for breakfast, especially those who haven’t yet learned to deposit their disgusting, milk-fueled devil shits in the toilet like normal people.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Danny’s Guide To Personal Grooming and Fashion

I was walking out of the supermarket near my office this morning when I passed a woman who had committed the mortal sin of leaving for work without drying her shoulder-length hair. Her head was covered in a matted mop of wet, curly blackness that bore striking resemblance to the pubic hair of a late 1970s porn king after an especially squishy romp on a leopard-skin loveseat with a top-heavy, coked-out starlet.

Now, don’t get all upset and accuse me of being the possessor of a wandering eye. I am not in the habit of closely examining the personal grooming habits of strange women, but this pube-headed goober’s Monday morning faux pas was thrust in my face. How can you NOT notice something like that? It’s like being kicked in the nards with a steel-toed cowboy boot. There are just certain things that should and should not be done when it comes to personal grooming.

1. If you are going to wear open-toed shoes, kindly sand back your toenails so they don’t protrude past the front rim of your flip-flops, pumps or Birkenstocks. Nobody wants to see your Gail-Devers-ass toenail daggers or see the sparks that fly backward every time you drag one of your Neanderthalic, two-inch-thick paws across the concrete when you walk (even if they’re painted Sassy Ass pink and decorated with little white flowers --- which, by the way, makes your feet look like a piece of wallpaper from the China Palace bathroom).

2. Perfume is nice when it’s a squirt or two on your neck, but those of you who douse yourselves with so much potpourri-scented pisswater that you make yourselves smell like the linen closet of an octogenarian are doing serious damage to both the ozone layer and the septums of the men you try to seduce. Christ, some of you smell like my parents’ Maltese does when it comes back from the dog groomers.

3. What’s the deal with mascara that leaves big old globules of black soot on your lashes? Some of you look like you have aphids crawling up your face. Do you have any idea how distracting it is to ask a female coworker about when she might have the TPS reports done only to see her stop mid-sentence in her reply to fish a piece of hardened mascara the size of a peach pit out of her left eye?

4. This just in: we can see the cavernous crevices under your caked-up on makeup. We know you had a big zit on your chin because you ate half a pint of Chunky Monkey and in a fit of rage and fear, you picked at it until it popped a wad of white zit goo all down your face. Big whup. It happens to us, too. Save yourself the money and the trouble of smearing that ashen slop all over your face and just tell us about the sound it made – “Squirtsch!” – when you popped it. It’s a great conversation starter.

5. If you want to wear a g-string, fine. If you want to let it peak out from the waistline of your pants, have at it. But please don’t let it hike so far up your back that men are forced to imagine that the underwear is so far up your ass that if you yawn, we might be able to see it wrapped around your uvula.

6. If you want to ask us about the kind of car seat we purchased for our children, please remove the Crest White Strips from your Cheerios-box-yellow grill first.

7. If you’re going to wear a mini-skirt, please also remember to shave the back of your legs, where your hamstrings are. Nothing like walking behind a woman who looks like a runway model in the front and The Bride of Sasquatch in the back.

8. If you can fit a two-liter bottle of Pepsi between your tits, please wear a bra with that shirt. Nobody wants to see your droopy, disgusting primate tits two inches from your waistline, cavewoman. And we certainly don’t want to see your hairy, dinner-plate-sized nipples peaking through the weathered “Porn Star” shirt you’ve tragically elected to wear to work on Dress-Down Friday.

9. Whatever the reason may be that you choose to break the air-tight seal between your dentures and your top gums and force the fake choppers outward with your tongue, please make sure that your mouth-breathing doesn’t produce a high-pitched whistle that distracts your coworkers.

10. Got a hickey? Wear a turtleneck. Nobody wants to have to imagine what you and your crack-showing, donut-eating IT boyfriend do in your own time, especially if it means that he sucks the Cheetos crumbs off of your neck with such ferocity that it leaves a bruised welt in the sh

Sunday, February 13, 2005

All Up In Walt’s Ass

One of the great, underrated joys of living in Southern California is the semi-regular opportunity it presents to interact with disciples of The Church of Disney, a cult-like congregation of “cast members” past and present who are likely to disembowel and consume the remains of any non-believer sinful enough to believe that “The Little Mermaid 6: Ariel Makes That Little Lobster Her Deep Sea Sex Slave” went straight to video because mainstream theatres would rather show a Wilford Brimley film festival than that animated swill. There is no gray when you’re a Disneyophile --- anything associated with the mouse or the theme park or the cable channel is mind-blowing, off-the-charts genius.

I know a handful of people who have worked for Disney --- one who worked in the corporate environs and one who was employed at Disneyland, presumably mopping up the snow-cone-colored vomit of park patrons who evicted their $8 corn dogs all over Main Street after a particularly bumpy trek through Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. In both cases, despite the fact that their respective tenures with Disney ended over a decade ago, there are incessant references made to Disney as the model by which all other brands and animation studios and employers should be judged. It’s as if anyone who ever signed a W-2 there has a fresh shot of Disney Kool-Aid waiting on his front porch each morning, right there next to the Orange County Register, the mud-covered Welcome matt and the stinky, corroded flip flops that don’t dare enter the home, lest they shower their toe-jammy stench all over the Goofy-and-Donald-playing-Pinochle throw rug in the entryway.

When I worked in advertising, I remember hearing one particular Disney cult member describe in glowing terms the Disneyland strategy of posting signs at various rides that overstate the amount of time visitors would have to wait. If the sign outside Space Mountain said “30 minutes from this point” and the wait was only 15, Disney had made a miracle happen by making people actually feel good about waiting 15 minutes. Funny, he never said anything about how that goodwill came crashing back to earth when the same patron had to pay $173 for two plates of cold, congealed fried chicken, leaden mashed potatoes, two Cokes and a piece of ass-cheese-flavored cheesecake at The Mad Hatter’s Hideaway in Tomorrowland. Fuckers.

I was shopping at the mall with Left-Handed, Power-Hitting Son this weekend when he predictably wandered into The Disney Store, a satellite supplier of Disney propaganda, overpriced merchandise and little plastic tchotchkes bearing the likenesses of Rollie Pollie Olie and Buzz Lightyear and the aforementioned undersea mermaid with the loose morals. I obliged the boy and sure enough he found a pair of underpants baring the likeness of the little blonde kid from The Incredibles (and let’s not even discuss how I feel about my son having pictures of a boy on his skivvies), and he absolutely HAD to have them. To avoid a scene, I obliged him and we trotted to the register with his new Dash butthuggers (and I have set the over-under on this garment being smeared with unwiped poop from his ass at four days).

Behind the register stood a sloth who embodies all things Disney: early 40s, overweight, pocked with acne and random, thick-gauge hairs in places where women don’t normally have hair (see: moustache, beard, ear bush), and enough Disney-themed pins and buttons on her suspenders to add a good 40 pounds to her already hefty upper body.

“Hi, welcome to The Disney Shtore,” she says, her speech slurred by a heavy lateral lisp and a build-up of thick white mouth smegma in the corners of her lips.. “Will thish be all for you today?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Would you like to shign up for our Disney Shavers Club and resheive an addition 15% off your purchash?”

“No. No thank you.”

“Are you sure? You’ll also get dishcounts off of cool Disney shpecialsh like admission to Disneyland and membersh-only merchandishe.”

“I’m sure. Just the underwear, ma’am.”

“Are these for you, little Mousheketeer?” she asks my son, folding the undies in that nice little trifold that only retail clothing experts can reproduce. My son says nothing. He merely hugs my right leg, partially hiding behind it. He is petrified.

She continues.

“I love The Incredibles, don’t you? I think it’sh some of the besht animation we’ve done since The Jungle Book 14: Mogley Getsh Busted For Shtealing Cigarettesh.” My favorite schene is the one where Mr. Ice hash to go help The Incredibles and he shaysh, ‘Honey, where is my shupershuit?’ Washn’t that hilarioush?”

“Yeah. Hilarious.”

A line is forming behind us and I pray to God and Walt Disney and all of those kinds of guys that no one I know is in the queue. They may think that I have said something to indulge this behemoth weirdo, and perhaps that I too am a disciple of The Church of Disney. I am not. I am merely a man who wants to get these underpants purchased so my son can get them home and poop in them.

“Oh! That remindsh me,” she says, “would you like to preorder your copy of The Incredibles on DVD?”

“No.”

“Are you shure?”

“Honey, here’s what I’m sure of. I’m sure that you are scaring the shit out of my son. I’m sure that there is so much of that white build-up in the corners of your mouth that if you were a shih-tzu they’d test you for rabies and distemper and probably euthanize you. And I’m sure that of all of the tweaked, pathetic Disney low-lifes I have ever met, none of them has had a better Tom Selleck porn star moustache than you. I am also sure that if you don’t swipe my Visa card right now so I can conclude this purchase, my son and I are going to strip naked, light our hair on fire and run screaming from this store.

[Deep breath.]

“Furthermore, I don’t want to be in your little Disney Rewards club and I don’t want to preorder any stupid DVDs and I don’t want to hear your lame-ass Samuel L. Jackson impression --- which, by the way, sounds more like Carol Channing than Mr. Ice. Simply hand me my son’s underpants and let’s get this over with, shishter.”

The Disney sloth didn’t miss a beat. She leaned over and asked my son, “Is your daddy always this grumpy?”

Friday, February 11, 2005

Show Me A Batshit Asshat And I'll Show You A Shit-Eating Cockmaster

I once read that psychologists believe people swear out of a need to feel empowered and in control, but I think that’s bullshit. I swear because it feels good. It’s fun. I’m good at it. And sometimes calling a person rude or narcissistic or misguided doesn’t do justice to his shortcomings the way calling him a shit-eating cockmaster does. It’s a matter of accuracy, not empowerment.

The first cursing I ever remember hearing came from the mouth of my father. It was, as so much cursing is, inspired by a traffic altercation. We were pulling into the parking lot of the Simi 4 Deli when some ditsy bimbo in a wood-paneled yellow station wagon cut in front of us and nearly wrecked our shit brown Ford Granada. My dad, a man you don’t want to piss off, rolled down his window and lit that bitch up, rattling off a prolific string of expletives that forced my mother to cover her ears and my sister and me to giggle uncontrollably in the back seat. That experience was an awakening for me that I put on par with the first time I saw bare breasts.

And so began my life in profanity.

From time to time I call my sister and try out new curse words on her. We’ll talk about the usual gossip and family news and then I’ll say, “OK, I think I have to go now, you fuck-knocker.” If she laughs, that new word goes into everyday rotation. If not, the word goes down the drain the way “shit monkey” and “dickmunch” and “assclown” did.

Certain words are bona fide staples in my profane vocabulary --- words like “batshit” and “asshat” and the reliable “cocksucker.” It’s important to use these words in the proper application. Some are nouns, some are adjectives. You don’t want to call someone a batshit because that’s an adjective and calling them that would be like calling them a moist or a magenta. Therein lies the slippery slope of swearing: use the word correctly or you might sound like an assclown.

Some of the people who read Human Writes have told me they recommend the site to their friends only after warning them that the content is “a little raw.” I take offense to that. It’s not raw. This is how people talk, especially when they’re mad or oppressed or under the influence of near-fatal doses of drive-thru chow. And people always ask me if I talk like this in front of my children. The answer, of course, is yes. “For the fourth time, get in the motherfucking bathtub, shit-for-brains.” “No, dear, you may not watch Barney again because he is a cocksucking purple dipshit.” And so on.

I by no means believe I am alone in my adherence to this strict moral code of cursing. To prove my point, I would like you all to answer the following questions when you leave a comment this weekend:

1. What is your favorite curse word?2. Please use your answer to No. 1 in a sentence.3. Invent a new curse word right now and put it here. 4. Without naming names, say something profane about someone you don’t like.5. Describe a time when you cursed when you shouldn’t have (e.g., in front of your children or your parents).6. Describe yourself in a sentence using at least one dirty word.

Links

Other Humans Write

Here are actual questions you asked the presidential candidates when they appeared on your show. To Bush: 'Were y'all spankers?" To Kerry: "Did you ever spank the girls?" To Bush: "Did you spank them?" To Kerry: "What did she do to get spanked?" Hey, Dr. Phil, keep it in your pleated pants. [GQ Magazine, Dec. 2004, pg. 372]